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STORM

Berit, 66, saw her house blow away on Christmas Day

A 66-year-old Norwegian woman sought refuge in her cellar and escaped unharmed as a hurricane ripped her home to pieces on Christmas Day.

Berit Myren, from Lodalen in western Norway, was later rescued from the ruins of her home in a neighbour’s tractor, local newspaper Fjordingen reports.

Popping her head up from the cellar to see if the storm, dubbed Dagmar, had done any damage, Myren found her home was no longer intact.

She rushed to the telephone and called her neighbour, national broadcaster NRK reports. By the time he arrived to take her away in his tractor, the 30-year-old house was completely destroyed.

Once the winds began to calm, Myren’s family ventured back to the site to assess the damage.

“The roof of the house is 500 meters away. The walls have been torn down. It's just fortunate nobody was injured,” said her daughter, Oddbjørg Tonning, to NRK.

“It was tough getting there and seeing my childhood home in ruins,” she added.

Around 5,000 homes in western Norway remained without electricity on Wednesday morning. The Christmas storm inflicted major damage to the national grid, as powerful winds and landslides left 100,000 households without power on Monday morning.

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WEATHER

Norway to get a taste of summer with 20C days this week

Summer is finally here! Or least it is if you live in southern Norway, where a warm front coming up from Europe will bring t-shirt temperatures of 20C by Thursday, according to forecasts.

Norway to get a taste of summer with 20C days this week

Warm air from southern Europe will combine with a high pressure zone which will bring clear skies and sunshine, with summery weather coming towards the end of the week, Norway’s national weather forecaster Yr has reported. 

“Thursday and Friday especially will be nice,” Ingrid Villa, a meteorologist at the Norwegian Meteorological Institute, told the public broadcaster NRK. “Then we will probably get temperatures of over 20 degrees Celsius in some places.” 

Patches of 20C warmth are expected both in western Norway around Bergen and in Western Norway around Oslo, with the area around Tromsø expected to have slightly cooler weather, although Villa said that “it will absolutely be something like summer there too”. 

The warm sunny weather is, however, expected to pass northern Norway by, with grey overcast skies expected for much of this week. 

But if you think summer has come to Norway to stay, you risk disappointment as much cooler temperatures are expected next week.  

“There’s nothing unusual in getting an early taste of summer in April and the start of May, and then we can quickly go back to cooler more spring-like weather,” Villa said. 

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